A DEATH AND A MARRIAGE

BEHIND THE PAINTED FAN, EPISODE 1

SUSANNE DUNLAP

CHAPTER 1

The late-afternoon sun slanted in through the high windows of Louis Vigée’s humble studio, gilding its shelves crammed with pigments and brushes, scattered pots of oil and jars of water, easels, and hooks on the wall for smocks. Elisabeth perched on a low stool, gazing across the room at her father, eyes shining.

She followed his every movement as he swished his brush in the glass of water then, pinched between two fingers, held the almost-finished ivory and silk fan up to reveal the exquisite detail of his painting, a pastoral scene that spread across the delicate fabric. The maiden in it would remain forever suspended above the ground on a swing in mid-arc, glancing coyly over her shoulder at her beloved. Push me higher! Elisabeth imagined her saying as her father cocked his head from side to side and pursed his lips, turning the fan this way and that. Once satisfied with his work, he hung the open fan by its cord from a hook above the table.

“The fan is a lady’s most valuable possession,” he said, turning toward Elisabeth, who stood on cue. “You must learn about its subtle language if you are to become indispensable to your betters.”

Elisabeth smiled, knowing by heart the ritual to come.

Vigée lifted an as-yet unpainted, closed fan off a nearby shelf and pointed to the guards. “You see, I paint figures here, and here, on the frame, because they will show when a lady gestures with it—so.” He flicked the fan open wide so that the ivory silk caught the light and sent the dust motes whirling, then snapped it shut and tapped his right cheek with its closed end.

“What does that mean, Papa?” Elisabeth asked, her smile widening to create dimples in her cheeks.

“It means, come here.”

She smoothed down her muslin skirts, holding her hands gracefully out to her sides as if she were wearing wide, boned panniers, then took three dainty steps toward him, careful to stay just out of his reach.

“And then the figure is still visible when the lady does this…” He turned the fan so it pointed away from him and toward Elisabeth and touched the head, with its rivet that held the sticks together, to his lips.

“What does that mean, Papa?” she asked, barely able to suppress a giggle.

Vigée knelt down on the dusty, paint-flecked floor and opened his arms wide. “It means, kiss me!”

Elisabeth ran into his embrace and kissed him all over his face. “You didn’t say where I should kiss you so I’d better be thorough!” she said, laughing all the while.

They were still laughing when the studio door opened and Elisabeth’s mother, Jeanne, entered and tried—unsuccessfully—to scowl with disapproval at her husband’s and daughter’s antics. “Have you finished that fan?” she asked, brushing a drift of white hair powder off the front of her dress, an artifact from her last hairdressing client. “The comtesse wants it for the ball this Saturday.”

“You know it will be done. Have I ever disappointed you?”

Madame Vigée didn’t answer, but turned to go back to the apartment two floors below. “We have fish for dinner. Don’t be late, or it will spoil,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried down the stairs.

Elisabeth stepped away from her father and with practiced hands helped him clean his fox-hair and horsehair brushes and put all the paints and materials away.

“Come, my little princess,” Vigée said, holding out his hand. He led her out the studio door, pausing to lock it with the old iron key tucked into a gap above the door frame. He put his finger to his lips as he nudged the key back into its obvious hiding place. “Your mother would not like it if you came up to the studio while I was out and worked on your own pictures. She thinks I will turn you into an artist.”

Elisabeth remained mute, but she knew, even then, that nothing her mother said or did could change her destiny. She would draw, she would paint, she would become an artist like her father—better than her father—one way or another.

CHAPTER 2

Louis Vigée taught his daughter how to paint. And then he died.

It was all so unreal, Elisabeth thought, sitting bolt upright on a stool in the corner of their small parlor, her fingers restless, her eyes swollen, while a parade of visitors came and went. Having watched her father fade, day by day, moment by moment, so fast, had felt like watching a play. She could do nothing to change the outcome from her seat outside the drama. Until the very end, she imagined that the curtain would come down, and the bright, cheerful Louis Vigée would leap up from the divan and take an extravagant bow. But the fishbone had been too deeply embedded in his throat to remove, and infection had set in rapidly. All that remained was to wait for the inevitable end.

Now, everything about her world felt dark. Her father had been the most joyful person she knew, no matter whether the times were good or bad. He made little money from his few portrait commissions and fan painting, and they were always on the brink of financial ruin according to her mother—who Elisabeth was old enough to know probably supported the family herself with her hairdressing business. When Jeanne tried to talk to Louis about money, get him to be more serious and work harder and save instead of spending everything he earned in the cafes with his artist friends, he would take her hands and twirl her around their little parlor, only pausing to bring Elisabeth into the circle. “Life is too short not to seize every opportunity for pleasure!” he would say. He even laughed when Elisabeth was sent home in disgrace from the convent school for drawing portraits of all her classmates in the margins of her books. “She is an artist,” he had said, smoothing Jeanne’s hair away from her forehead where it had come loose from her coiffure. “What is the harm in that?”

Where was the harm indeed? Elisabeth thought, and then watched her beautiful mother put on a brave face for yet another visitor, taking care that she did not weep in front of anyone so her eyes wouldn’t become red and puffy.

On the fourth day after the funeral, Elisabeth’s godfather, Gabriel Doyen, came to visit. He’d been at the church and spoken only briefly to her mother, which wasn’t like him. Her mother usually had to practically push him out the door late at night when he visited with them while her father was alive. But then, Louis Vigée had been Doyen’s closest friend. And Elisabeth also believed Doyen was a little in love with her mother, who was now a widow and—after the appropriate period of mourning—would be free to marry.

“You must tell me if there is anything—anything at all—I can do for you, no matter how little or how big,” he said as he bowed over her mother’s hand. “It would give me great pleasure to ensure that Elisabeth’s instruction in drawing and painting continues.”

“We cannot afford lessons,” her mother said. “She will have to learn by imitating the masters. We go frequently to the galleries and salons. That will be enough.”

Doyen opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Elisabeth caught his eye just before he left, and he nodded to her. She wished they had been alone and she could talk to him about painting. Next to her father’s voice and laugh, that was something she missed almost more than anything. The talk, the artists who visited and sketched and praised her drawings. Their humble home in the Marais had hosted some of the greatest artists in Paris—Greuze, Vernet, Roslin—although whether they came to talk with her father or to worship at the shrine of her mother’s beauty, Elisabeth wasn’t sure.

They surely didn’t come to see her. She was all gangly and too tall by far for her age, and her skin wasn’t good and she was already twelve and as awkward and curveless as a boy—or so her mother often reminded her.

But her father told her she was beautiful, inside and out. And besides, she had already decided she would never marry. All that mattered was painting. You didn’t need to be beautiful to do that.

The next day, Doyen visited again, but not alone.

“This is Rosalie Bocquet,” Doyen said. “She is a neighbor of mine. Her papa has a shop that sells bric-a-brac and ornaments.”

“Enchantée,” Elisableth said, curtsying, wondering why Doyen would bring a stranger into their house at this time. Sounds of muted female voices came from her mother’s bedroom, where she was talking to her friend, Madame Honfleur.

“We have nothing. Nothing!” Her mother’s harsh whisper carried through a momentary silence.

A faint blush stole into Elisabeth’s cheeks as she glanced toward the door of the bedroom and then back to Rosalie.

Rosalie smiled and came toward her, hands outstretched. “Monsieur Doyen has told me a great deal about you. I would not let him wait another day before introducing us. I understand you are an artist.”

Still, the conversation from the next room intruded. “Étienne will have to leave school. I cannot see how we can manage.” Her mother’s distress was clearly audible. “I do not bring in enough to do more than pay the rent and put food on the table.”

Elisabeth pulled Rosalie toward the door that led to the vestibule and the stairs to the attics. “Would you like to see the atelier?” she said, desperate to get away from her mother’s constant fretting.

Doyen said, “You two go ahead. I shall stay and see if I can be of any assistance to your mother.”

The two girls hurried away and clattered up the steps in their pattens. Elisabeth paused at the top, the studio key in her hands. She had not set foot in her that room since her father’s death. She froze, forcing back the tears that threatened to flow embarrassingly down her cheeks.

“Are you unwell?” Rosalie put her gloved hand on Elisabeth’s shoulder.

Elisabeth shook her head and took a deep breath. “I’m quite well, thank you. It’s only that…” She stopped speaking. A block of ice pushed itself up from her heart and into her throat, sticking in the same place where the fishbone had lodged in her father’s.

“It’s all right. You can cry,” Rosalie said, now threading her arms around Elisabeth’s waist from behind. “There is no one about to hear you, except me. And I mean to be your dear friend, so it won’t matter at all.”

It was impossible to hold back her tears in the face of such kindness, and Elisabeth turned and wept onto her new friend’s shoulder, heaving with sobs she’d suppressed for days.

When her tears had subsided into great shuddering breaths, Rosalie handed her a lace-edged handkerchief out of her sleeve and dabbed her cheeks. Elisabeth smiled. “Let’s go in. I’m all right now.” Her hand shook as she fitted the key into the lock, grasped it with both hands, and turned until the bolt slid from its housing.

The late afternoon light warmed the studio and gilded its modest furnishings. Elisabeth circled the room, touching everything, coming to a stop in front of a charcoal sketch tacked to the wall, the head of an old man.

“That’s a lovely study. Did your father ever finish the painting?” Rosalie said.

“He did not draw it. I did. Years ago.” She remembered it so clearly. She was only seven, and when he saw it her father had called her an artist for the first time.

“Years ago? But…I think you are the same age as I am.”

“Yes.”

“So, it’s true what Doyen says. You are a remarkable talent.”

Elisabeth turned and searched Rosalie’s eyes. “He really said that? About me?” And then she asked, “Why did Doyen bring you here?”

“He wants us to be friends, I think. But also, he brought me because I, too, am an artist. At least, I’m trying to be.”

Another girl who’s an artist! Elisabeth thought. “What is your medium?” she asked.

“I prefer pastels, but sometimes I dabble in oils.”

“You must be very rich!” The words popped out before Elisabeth could stop herself.

Rosalie laughed. “No, not rich! But my parents do spoil me a little.”

Indeed they must, Elisabeth thought. She herself had only been allowed to try her father’s oil colors once or twice. They were expensive. Pastel crayons could be cheaply purchased, or made with inexpensive ingredients. And there was no need for costly canvas and gesso, just roughened paper. “I don’t like oils. They take too long to dry. I, too, prefer pastels.” It was all she could think of to say.

“Really? Doyen seemed to think you would be interested in attending lessons with me, with Briard, at the Louvre. He said you were looking for an opportunity to increase your skill in oil painting.”

Caught in a lie. Elisabeth smiled. “It’s no use pretending. I do like pastels, but it’s not what I truly want. I would give my right arm—if I didn’t need it to paint—to learn to paint in oils properly.”

“Then we shall do it, together!”

A sudden thought clouded Elisabeth’s mind. These lessons would be expensive. They wouldn’t be able to afford them. “We should return to Mama,” she said, not wanting to prolong a conversation that could only lead to disappointment.

“Yes, I should go home. It’s not very far. I live on the Rue St. Denis. It’s an easy distance in a fiacre. Will you come and visit, very soon? Doyen can bring you the first time.”

“If I can,” Elisabeth said, not at all certain she could manage it.

But that night was the first since the day of her father’s death that her mind was too full of ideas and hopes to cry herself to sleep, and she dreamed of vivid colors and the smell of linseed oil.

CHAPTER 3

A few days later, Elisabeth found herself walking along the street with Doyen, heading toward Rosalie’s parents’ shop in a busy part of the Marais. They lived in an apartment above it, as most shopkeepers did. As they walked, Elisabeth’s mind was busy on an idea she’d had as she listened to her mother fretting about money and watched her pace across the floor, wringing her hands, hour after hour. It was a bold idea, but anything would be better than this constant state of uncertainty.

After a few deep breaths, she said, afraid to look at Doyen in case he laughed out loud at her idea, “If I wanted to earn money painting, how would I do it?”

She let the question hang in the air for a few moments, and was just about to lose hope of being taken seriously and say something like, of course, I know I’m too young. But Doyen paused and turned toward her. “So that’s what you want? You have talent, to be sure.” He rubbed his chin. “But how to start…You would first contact your father’s customers. Most of them know you from visiting your father’s studio, several have seen your work. And I am certain Vernet and Greuze would help you. They would do anything for so good a friend.”

Elisabeth suppressed the urge to squeal with happiness as they continued walking. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t dismiss it. He must think it a reasonable idea. Of course she knew all the artists by sight and to say bonjour, but she had no inkling where they lived or worked, how she would contact them—or if her mother would even allow her to.

As if he had been looking inside her thoughts, Doyen said, “I can give you a start. I know someone who had been planning to commission a portrait from your Papa. It is a man, though. You will need a chaperon. Perhaps Madame Vigée would be willing… Ah! here we are.”

They stopped in front of a well-kept store with a sign hanging above it that said A. Bocquet, Objets d’Art. They didn’t enter the store, but went in through a door next to it that led into the vestibule and stairs to the upper floors and the apartments. They climbed one flight of stairs, and Elisabeth was about to continue up when Doyen stopped her. “This is the one,” he said.

The first floor! The most elegant floor, normally occupied by a single, spacious apartment with high ceilings and many rooms—unlike Elisabeth’s family’s small, cramped third-floor apartment.

A maid answered Doyen’s knock and took their coats, but before Elisabeth had hers fully off, Rosalie rushed out from another room, grasped her hands, and pulled her away. “You cannot imagine how I have been looking forward to this moment. Come!”

Elisabeth looked back at Doyen, raised her eyebrows and gave him a quick wave.

“I can see I am no longer needed! I shall return to take you home at…” Doyen called after them.

“No need!” Rosalie said. “We’ll send one of the maids with her. I don’t want her to leave until we’ve had a long time to talk—and paint!”

Rosalie’s airy north-facing studio was stocked with all the best artists’ supplies—brushes, pigments, oils, pastel crayons, paper, and canvas, plus three easels and several palettes. Elisabeth stood open-mouthed and surveyed the bounty.

“Come. Let’s get to work. I have a still life set up over here,” Rosalie said, handing Elisabeth a smock and steering her toward an easel with a blank, stretched and gessoed canvas on it.

But Elisabeth didn’t want to paint a still life. Her new friend was so beautiful, her skin so brilliant and eyes so full of life and kindness, she wanted to capture it all on canvas. She angled her easel slightly so she could see Rosalie’s perfect profile, selected and mixed some pigments, and soon was lost in the practice of art.

The world disappeared, and the two friends worked side-by-side for hours, the only sound the swish of brushes against canvas and voices and laughter filtering up from the street outside. When the light faded, they stepped back, took off their smocks and stretched.

“Let me see!” Rosalie said, rushing over to Elisabeth’s easel.

“No! It’s not finished, it’s—”

But Rosalie paid no attention and stood right in front of the half-finished portrait, stunned into silence. After a moment she said, “But you already know how to render skin tones! Where did you learn?”

Elisabeth shrugged. “I watched.”

“That settles it,” Rosalie said. “As soon as ever we can, you and I will go to the Louvre and get into Briard’s studio. You must paint in oils, you must paint portraits!” She put her hands on Elisabeth’s cheeks, brought her face toward hers, and planted a delicate kiss on Elisabeth’s lips. “You will be famous. I’m sure of it.”

Elisabeth’s heart raced and her mind spun in circles. Could it be so? She always felt it, but to have someone else to say it. Whatever came next, this day would remain in her memory forever.

The plan with Briard was delayed. He had no room for any more lady students, he said, on the day that Elisabeth and Rosalie went there together, portfolios in hand. He told them to return in a few months. Elisabeth was disappointed, but so long as she could continue painting in Rosalie’s studio, she wasn’t very sorry. In fact, she spent as much time as possible with her friend, always glad to get out of her mother’s way.

She was preparing for another day with Rosalie one morning about a month later when her mother stopped her on her way out. “A gentleman is coming to dinner this evening. Monsieur Le Sèvre. I particularly want you to meet him. I have sent for Étienne, who is coming home from school for the night. If Monsieur Le Sèvre approves of us, our difficulties may be at an end.”

Elisabeth couldn’t at first imagine what her mother was talking about. “What do you mean?” she said. Were they going to borrow money? Elisabeth’s painting had not added any financial burden because Rosalie purchased all the materials, and had arranged for some of Elisabeth’s miniatures to be sold in her father’s shop. It was the first money she’d ever earned from painting, and she wished she could have bought something with it for herself—some new brushes, perhaps—but she gave the money to her mother. Hadn’t it helped? Not only that, but although the commission Doyen had told her about came to nothing in the end, one of her mother’s clients—who had seen a drawing of Elisabeth’s when she came to have her hair powdered—asked to sit for a portrait the next time she was there. She would pay two Livres for it. Elisabeth thought surely the commissions would continue to come in, and she’d painted a few fans for Monsieur Bocquet to sell in his boutique as well. Their situation couldn’t be so terrible.

Then it struck her. The look on her mother’s face, the slight tremor in her hands—She had decided to marry again. And the man she chose was coming that evening to decide whether Elisabeth and Étienne were suitable.

“I shall return before dinner,” Elisabeth said, her hand already on the door handle.

“I would prefer you not to go today,” her mother said. “I do not want you smelling of oil paint and turpentine and with dirty fingers at the dinner table. You must look like the young lady you are.”

Elisabeth didn’t dare argue. She knew when her mother could not be persuaded to something, and so she stayed home, helping to clean every speck of dirt or dust from the apartment, scrubbing until her hands ached. Madame Vigée had hired a cook for the day, and Elisabeth’s stomach growled at the rich scents of broth and onions, herbs and roasting meat.

Just late enough so that he didn’t have to help at all Étienne pounded up the stairs and into the apartment, face flushed, eyes dancing. “Bonjour Elisabeth!” he said grabbing her hands and whirling her around after he’d kissed his mother.

“You’ll mess my hair!” Elisabeth said, not really caring. Just like her father, Étienne brought smiles to everyone’s faces when he entered a room.

“Will someone pay the fiacre?” Étienne said.

“I’ll go,” Elisabeth said, but really she wanted to stay and talk to her brother, whom she hadn’t seen since the day of their father’s funeral.

By the time she’d run back up the stairs, Étienne was already engulfed in Madame Vigée’s effusive care. “Would you like a glass of milk, or a glass of wine after your journey? You must be tired!” she said, not paying any attention to Elisabeth who strolled to the window and looked out, wondering if any of the men walking along the street was Monsieur Le Sèvre. Or perhaps, she thought, he was really wealthy and had his own carriage.

A loud, crisp knock came a moment later, and the cook, who had been transformed into a servant for the evening walked without hurrying to the door and opened it.

A small, slight man with a pale complexion stepped into the apartment. He wore no wig, which was common for men on informal visits. If he had, it would have hidden the bald spot that could not be disguised by combing over his thin, graying hair.

But Elisabeth spent little time examining his head, her attention having been caught by a large diamond pin on the knot of his cravat.

Her mother walked forward, a warm smile on her face. “Welcome, Monsieur Le Sèvre.” She curtsied and he bowed. “May I introduce my son, Étienne, and my daughter, Élisabeth-Louise.” She grabbed hold of Elisabeth’s arm and pressed her down into a deep curtsy.

“Enchanté,” Le Sèvre said, without actually looking at Elisabeth, instead letting his eyes rove around the little parlor. When the “maid” entered the room with a tray of crystal glasses filled with red wine, he lifted his up to the light and looked through it appraisingly.

At dinner, only Étienne and Le Sèvre ate much at all. Elisabeth kept a close eye on her mother, who once in a while leaned forward toward Le Sèvre on the pretext of offering him more food, or to say something so that Étienne and I couldn’t hear, but in reality inviting him to admire her softly mounding breasts. She lowered her eyes and smiled often that evening, making the most of her eyelashes and the shadows they cast in the candlelight on her smooth cheeks. How could she? Elisabeth thought. Surely she would not stoop to allying herself with this insect of a man after having had such a handsome, vibrant husband.

But the signs were that Le Sèvre was smitten. He all but ignored Elisabeth and Étienne. Elisabeth would have happily left as soon as the “maid” cleared everything away, but her mother shot her a stern look that pinned her to her chair.

For an hour after that, Le Sèvre went on and on about how he was a jeweler, and the price of gold, and the difficulty of obtaining the finest gems because of the ban against trade with India. Judging by her mother’s reactions, anyone would think that nothing interested her more than the vagaries of the jewelry trade.

When he’d finally gone, Elisabeth escaped to her room and tried not to think about the evening. Only one thing the jeweler said remained in her memory. He said, “Apparently the king is negotiating a match between his grandson, Louis, the dauphin, and a grand duchess of Austria. That will no doubt be occasion for the jewelers in Paris to rejoice.”

The dauphin was only fourteen—just a year older than Elisabeth was by then. The idea of courting—let alone marriage—filled Elisabeth with dread.

While she was braiding her hair for bed, Étienne tapped on her door and didn’t wait to be invited before entering. “So, Maman has a wealthy suitor,” he said.

“But really, how could she? He’s so…ordinary.”

Étienne shrugged. “If, as Mama said in her letter, marrying him will allow me to stay in school, then I am content.”

Of course Étienne felt that way, Elisabeth thought, quelling her angry retort about the fact that no one seems to have considered her feelings in all this. “But what if she is not happy? What if we are not happy?”

Étienne stood behind his sister where she sat in front of the small mirror on her dressing table and put his hands on his shoulders. He was younger than Elisabeth by three years, yet the look in his eyes, as if he had already seen things Elisabeth could not imagine, made him seem much more mature. “He is old, and will probably die before Maman. Then she will be a rich widow instead of a poor one.”

Le Sèvre proposed, Madame Vigée accepted, and Elisabeth’s life changed overnight.

The wedding took place quietly, on a breezy May day. Étienne didn’t come home from school for it, leaving Doyen and Elisabeth to be the only witnesses. Elisabeth thought it cruel of her mother to ask a man she knew had been secretly in love with her for years to perform that service, but he could deny her nothing.

After the ceremony, the four of them piled into a hired coach and shared a subdued wedding breakfast at an inn in the suburbs near the Porte St. Germain.

“To the happy couple,” Doyen said, raising his glass of champagne with a hand that shook very slightly.

Elisabeth couldn’t bring herself to look at Le Sèvre. He’d worn a complacent, self-satisfied smile all day, as though he had made a transaction that was highly favorable to him, and the person on the other end of it still had no idea she’d been duped. Madame Vigée—now Madame Le Sèvre—smiled too, but hers was a smile of pure, undisguised relief.

The newlyweds departed for a brief wedding journey to Brittany immediately after the breakfast, leaving Doyen to escort Elisabeth to Rosalie’s, where she would stay for two weeks. When the couple returned, it would be to a new apartment. All Elisabeth’s things from her home on the Rue de Coquiliere had been packed away and sent over to the apartment Le Sèvre had taken for them on the much-more-fashionable Rue Saint Honoré.

As she and her godfather rocked and bounced over the cobbles back to the Marais, Doyen turned to Elisabeth and took her hand. “Promise me something, Elisabeth.”

“Of course,” she said.

“Two things, actually. The first is that if there is any trouble, if things don’t work out as you and your mother had hoped, for any reason, you will let me help you.”

Good, kind Doyen, Elisabeth thought. Even in his disappointment he cared for them all. “Don’t worry,” she said, smiling. “You have always been my great friend as well as my generous godfather.”

“Promise me!” He took both her hands in hers and pressed them, hard.

“I promise,” she said, a crease of worry between her eyebrows. “You said there was something else.”

“Ah.” He sat back, releasing his grip on Elisabeth. “This has to do with you alone. Another promise.”

“Yes?”

“Promise me that no matter what happens, whatever your step-papa says, you will not stop painting.”

“Of course! Why would you think I would?”

“It’s only that, I believe, that is, I got the sense that Le Sèvre is not a lover of art.”

Although she did not like Le Sèvre, Elisabeth hadn’t thought that he might pressure her to give up her painting. “I can always run away and live with Rosalie,” she said in an attempt to lighten the tone of their conversation.

Doyen’s eyes widened in alarm. “But you mustn’t. On no account are you to leave your mother alone, do you understand? I shall always be nearby to fight for you, if it comes to that.”

By then they had arrived at their destination, and Doyen helped Elisabeth out of the carriage while the driver took her case. Before she went inside, Doyen folded Elisabeth in a warm embrace. “Forgive my foolishness!” he said when he released her. “Only remember what you promised.”

CHAPTER 4

Elisabeth stood on the street and stared up at the limestone building that would be her home on the Rue Saint Honoré. Her mother hadn’t come to fetch her from Rosalie’s, only sent word that they were back and she should meet them there. At least, she thought, it was across the street from the Palais Royale with its magnificent art collection and beautiful garden. She could always escape there if she needed to.

She took a deep breath and rang the bell for the porter, who let her in once she explained who she was. He waved her up to the first floor. So, she thought, we’ve moved up in the world. Her mother answered her knock, and they embraced, more warmly than Elisabeth expected. “Where will I have my studio?” Elisabeth asked, taking in the signs of fatigue around her mother’s eyes.

“That is yet to be decided. For the moment, we will sleep in here.” She beckoned Elisabeth to follow her.

We? she thought. They passed through the sitting room and a dining room, by the large bedrooms toward the front of the apartment, and entered a small chamber at the back of the apartment, with one window high up in the wall and furnished only with a narrow divan bed and a cot. “This is a maid’s room!” Elisabeth said before she could stop herself.

Her mother drew herself up and faced her. “Jacques transacts his business at all hours and does not want to disturb us.” She smiled and turned to start unpacking the single trunk that sat on the floor, taking up much of the extra space in the small, dark room.

I will never be able to paint in here, if this is all he’s allotted us, Elisabeth thought.

But meager sleeping accommodations was not the worst of the changes Elisabeth and her mother had to expect. The jeweler objected to their former friends, claiming that their relative poverty did not serve his business, and that they smelled, in any case, of turpentine.

Yet it wasn’t until Elisabeth overheard them both one night after they had gone out to the theater and she had retired early that she began to understand the extent of the alterations in their life.

“You looked at him! I saw you! No sense denying it.” Le Sèvre’s high, reedy voice pierced through Elisabeth’s shallow sleep. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, then listened hard.

“Mon cher, Antoine Poinsinet is a dear friend who used to honor us by coming to dinner. Isn’t it good for your business to be associated with a successful playwright?” A barely perceptible tremble in her mother’s voice alerted Elisabeth to danger.

A moment later, she heard the sharp smack of flesh on flesh. Had he slapped her? How dare he! Elizabeth thought, her feet already out from under the covers and planted on the floor. She wanted to run to her mother, and was about to until she heard her speak again.

“How dare you!” The hoarse whisper bore no trace of tears, reminding Elisabeth that her mother was a strong woman who had been the true bulwark of their family. “I can leave you, and tell the world how you duped me into this alliance!”

What? Elisabeth thought.

“Duped you? My dear, I see only that a bargain was struck. I have all the money. I pay for your son’s education and clothe and feed you and your daughter. And you must perform the function of my consort. A jeweler needs a wife and her female friends to increase his business. Men like Poinsinet are worthless to me.”

“Is that how you choose your friends? According to how much business they can give you?”

Elisabeth smiled, glad of her mother’s retort.

Le Sèvre heaved a theatrical, impatient sigh. “Do you suppose I have been able to raise myself up from the gutter to this station by not seizing every opportunity?”

“Nonetheless, you cannot keep me here against my will. You treat my daughter like a servant. She is not a servant, she is an artist. She should have a studio and be allowed to continue to develop her skill and her clientele.”

For a moment, Elisabeth wasn’t sure she’d heard her mother right. Was she defending her painting to Le Sèvre?

“Her…clientele?” Le Sèvre said.

“Yes. In a small way, she has made a name for herself painting portraits, in pastels and oils, for some wealthy people.”

“How much does she receive for these…portraits?”

“One lady paid her a demi-écu. But usually she receives a few livres.”

His voice had gradually lost its hard edge. “I see I have been mistaken in assessing Elisabeth’s value. I thought she was pretty enough to marry well, but I did not realize she had talent. She must continue to paint, of course.”

“Oh Cheri! I knew you’d come around to it!”

Elisabeth waited to hear more, but they stopped speaking for a few moments. She didn’t want to know what had happened, not willing to envision her mother in the arms of Le Sèvre.

“It’s time for bed,” her mother said in a voice honeyed with persuasion. “Shall I come to your room tonight?”

Elisabeth slid back beneath the covers and put her hands over her ears. She forced herself to think about painting, not about what was going on between her mother and her abominable stepfather.

CHAPTER 5

Nothing changed immediately, much to Elisabeth’s chagrin. She didn’t dare ask her mother about it, not wanting to let on that she’d heard a private conversation. But one morning about a week later, as they sat at the breakfast table after Le Sèvre’s departure for his workshop, her mother said, “Would you like to visit the galleries at the Palais Royale?” The weather was still cold, but there was a breath of spring in the air.

“I’d like that,” Elisabeth said. “May I bring my sketching things?”

“Of course!”

After the girl had cleared away the breakfast things, Elisabeth and her mother walked over to the Palais Royale accompanied by the footman, Hugo. Elisabeth wasn’t deceived that it was a courtesy on Le Sèvre’s part. Hugo would be sure to report to his master if her mother so much as smiled at a male acquaintance. As to those who smiled at her—she could not help it if she was beautiful, Elisabeth thought. Eyes turned when she entered a room.

They entered the library wing of the vast Palais Royale, where the public could go and enjoy the magnificent collection assembled by the Orléans family. Setting foot after months in the rooms hung with portraits and landscapes painted by the finest French and Italian masters revived Elisabeth as no other remedy could. The past weeks of dreary confinement fell away, and she drank in the beauty around her as if she had been wandering in a desert.

Madame Le Sèvre shadowed her daughter at a discreet distance, letting her stop and stare at individual paintings for as along as she wished, patiently waiting while Elisabeth sketched something that caught her eye, trying to lock the finer points of the artist’s technique in her memory. Elisabeth didn’t much care about the rich furnishings that surrounded her, the tapestries and carpets and ornate furniture. Nor did she notice particularly the exquisitely garbed ladies who came to saunter through more to be seen than to see.

Elisabeth was content to notice nothing but the paintings and sculptures, until her mother nudged her to get her attention as a little crowd of ladies dressed even more opulently than everyone else passed into the room from one beyond. Her mother whispered in her ear, “They must be from Versailles,” she said. “The older one—that is the Comtesse de Noailles.”

The little group moved in their direction, and they flattened themselves as close to the walls as they could get without touching the pictures so the ladies could pass. These, Elisabeth thought, These are the ladies whose portraits I must paint. She wouldn’t, though, record their over-rouged cheeks.

As they passed near Elisabeth and her mother, one of the ladies said, “One wonders if the Austrian will have any appreciation for art.”

The Comtesse de Noailles answered, “She will no doubt be a savage creature when she arrives, but we must do our best with her.”

“They say her mother, the Empress, is an interfering old cow,” another of the group said.

Elisabeth didn’t know what they were talking about, and made a note to ask her mother, who had pulled her down into a curtsy as the group went by. Just as they rose, another woman entered from a different room with her own entourage.

“Ow!” Elisabeth whispered as her mother grabbed her arm so hard she could feel her fingernails.

Madame Le Sèvre hissed into her ear, “It’s Madame du Barry! The king’s maitresse en titre!”

The king’s official mistress was stunningly beautiful. Not one part of her face or figure could be faulted, except perhaps the vivid frankness of her eyes. Her clothes were more sumptuous, her jewels even more brilliant, than the aristocrats. She snapped open her large, gorgeously painted fan with diamonds glinting on its frame. The common folks, Parisian merchants and their wives and daughters, all curtsied to her as she moved languidly in the direction of the knot of nobility that had stopped where it was and pretended to be gazing at Andrea del Sarto’s Leda and the Swan. Their eyes hardly grazed it, though, as they smirked behind their fans and admired their ringed fingers and satin slippers.

Madame du Barry paused when she reached them. In order to let her pass, one of them would have to move out of the way. They pretended not to see her. It was an impasse. There was no question in Elisabeth’s mind that she would rather number herself among the aristocrats than be someone like Madame du Barry, however beautiful and wealthy. It would have crushed her to be the object of such disdain.

At last, when it was clear the ladies from court would not give away any ground, Madame du Barry stepped enough to the side so that Madame de Noailles could turn and glide forward, leading the younger ones on to the next painting. The beautiful courtesan shifted her eyes slightly, appraising the group. One of the younger ones, the pretty one, stepped just a little toward her as she passed, enough to nudge the king’s mistress slightly off balance.

A deep blush spread up from the neck of her blue gown until it disappeared beneath the layer of white powder on her face. “Someday you will regret your actions,” she said, so quietly, if Elisabeth hadn’t been standing close by, she would never have heard it.

Once all involved had dispersed to other rooms, Elisabeth had a moment to think about what the courtiers had said, too. She guessed the identify of “the Austrian.” It had been lively gossip around Paris, and in their home, where the ambitious jeweler licked his lips at the prospect of jewels to make for this new addition to the court. The Austrian was, of course, the grand duchess Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, daughter of the formidable empress of Austria, and now officially betrothed to the fifteen-year-old dauphin. Elisabeth shivered to think what a viper’s nest the young grand duchess would be walking into.

Elisabeth and her mother spent the entire afternoon going through the galleries until she could no longer hold up her sketchpad, her hand was stiff from drawing, and her eyes sore from looking and looking.

It wasn’t until they had left the palace and turned toward home that her mother said, “I have persuaded Jacques that you should have a studio, on an upper floor of the building, where the light is better. He has also agreed to allow you to receive clients and guests, so long as it is in the service of your painting. Also, you may attend the classes for young ladies that Briard teaches at the Louvre.”

Except for the fact she felt she had little to learn from Briard, Elisabeth’s heart leapt at the thought of once again being able to paint. “Thank you, Mama,” she said, understanding that only her mother’s intervention could have brought about such a change.

“There is one condition,” her mother added just as they were about to ring for the porter at their building.

Elisabeth’s initial joy ebbed a little. “Yes, Mama?”

“You are to give all your earnings, any money you receive for painting portraits, to your Papa.”

“I can’t. He’s dead,” she said, anger spilling out before she could stop it.

Jeanne Le Sèvre fixed her daughter with a hard stare. “According to the law, my husband is your father now.”

Elisabeth wished she could have taken back her words. Her mother was not the object of her bitterness. He, Le Sèvre, would hardly notice such a slight. How could he? Not only had he married her mother, but he had taken over all of her father’s possessions, even wearing some of his old clothes—which didn’t fit him. “Of course,” Elisabeth said, knowing that argument would be futile. What made her even more cross was that her stepfather could hardly need the pittance she would earn from her portraits.

Still, Elisabeth considered that condition a small enough price to pay for being able to do the one thing she cared most about in the world, and allowed herself to imagine what her studio would be like, who would sit for her, and how having the studio would enable her to get out of sight of Le Sèvre, and that no matter how little she needed the classes, going to the Louvre would put her in the middle of the art world in Paris.

CHAPTER 6

An unexpected bonus of the lessons with Briard was that Rosalie, too, attended them. The two friends found ways to be together, learning and gossiping and making plans for the future. For now, Elisabeth was content, and the time sped by.

After a year of instruction with Briard, Elisabeth had begun to find her own way, her own style. She also had a regular stream of portrait commissions, mostly from among her mother’s former hairdressing clients and some referred to her by Doyen. He kept track of her from afar, since he was not permitted to visit the Le Sèvre home. Mostly it was ladies who sat for Elisabeth, which did away with the necessity for a chaperone during the sittings.

As her portraits started to grace more and more rooms of the modestly affluent, she raised her prices—or rather, Le Sèvre insisted she do so. It now required an outlay of 100 livres at least to have the young Elisabeth Vigée paint your portrait. Although the money went directly to Le Sèvre, he at least saw the benefit of giving Elisabeth a more generous allowance for clothing, and never balked at the outlay for paints, canvases and other materials.

Along with her growing skill as a painter, Elisabeth grew in beauty, too. When she walked with Rosalie or her mother in the Palais Royale gardens or near the Temple, men’s appreciative gazes followed them both, and not just because of Rosalie’s loveliness. Although Rosalie allowed herself to be distracted by the attention, Elisabeth persisted in bringing their conversation back to painting.

“Don’t you worry about skin tones?” she asked, pulling on Rosalie’s arm to get her attention.

But Rosalie refused to turn, and instead pulled Elisabeth down into a deep curtsey.

“Please rise,” said a female voice Elisabeth didn’t recognize.

But when she finally looked at the woman who had spoken, she knew in an instant who she was. It was the Duchesse de Chartres, whom she had often seen from the apartment windows promenading on the terrace of the Palais Royale with her ladies-in-waiting.

“I have seen you, I think,” she said, touching Elisabeth’s chin. “You are that young girl, Mademoiselle Vigée, who paints portraits.”

How could she know? Elisabeth thought, too dumbstruck to ask a question. Besides, although the duchess called her a young girl, she was hardly more than two years Elisabeth’s senior. And very beautiful. She somehow found her tongue and answered, “Yes, Madame.”

“Would you come to my appartements so that I might sit for you?” she asked.

Elisabeth searched her eyes for some hint that she was teasing her, or having a joke at her expense. But all she could see was kindness and curiosity. The idea of the wealthiest lady in France asking her for a portrait sitting made her light headed. “When, at what day and time, would suit you?” she asked, concentrating on trying to sound calm even as her heart raced.

“I shall send for you,” the duchess said, then nodded and continued her walk, her ladies trailing behind and casting curious glances over their shoulders at Elisabeth.

“Elisabeth! Do you realize? You have a royal commission!” Rosalie dug her nails into Elisabeth’s arm, snapping her out of her daze.

It also brought her to her senses. The nobility were notoriously forgetful, she’d heard her mother say. “Only if she remembers me, and actually asks me to come.”

When she tried to piece it together later, Elisabeth couldn’t recall what happened on the rest of her walk with Rosalie, or how she managed to get home after that.

As Elisabeth expected, the duchess did not send for her the next day or the day after, and soon she simply put her hopes that such a thing would come to pass out of her mind. In any case, her busy schedule drove any thought of disappointment out of her head. News of her talents was gradually spreading out into bourgeois society, and month by month her income grew. She was not yet seventeen years old, and—although she didn’t know exactly how much money she’d allowed to flow into her stepfather’s hands—she roughly calculated it to be many hundreds of Livres, perhaps even as much as a thousand. Le Sèvre had long since stopped making any mention of the cost of an even larger extra room or the art supplies, and if her mother asked him, he was willing enough to allow her to buy a new ensemble.

One day, as she sat in front of the portrait of her mother she had almost finished, the maid, Lucie, tapped lightly on the door.

“Mademoiselle Vigée? You have a visitor.”

Something about the tone of Lucie’s voice caused Elisabeth to lay down her brush and stand, ready to remove her smock. The household staff had been warned not to interrupt her at work, and would not have imposed unless it was someone important.

“Entrez,” Elisabeth said, still staring at the portrait, deciding whether it needed any more delicate finishing touches.

“Exquise!”

Elisabeth turned, a smile ready to flash at her guest, to see an elderly, bent woman wearing a simple, silk gown, with a black kerchief tied over her cap and knotted under her chin. “Madame Geoffrin!” she said, immediately dropping into a curtsey, “I am truly honored.”

Elisabeth knew both by seeing the lady promenade in the gardens leaning on her cane and through reading the pamphlets and newspapers that this lady was none other than the most celebrated salonnière in Paris. Her talent apparently lay in bringing together people of wit and intelligence, mixing artists and aristocrats, philosophes and philanderers, in a way that guaranteed what were described as the most diverting salons. Even the greatest men and the most elegant and aristocratic women prized invitations to her salon.

“Please, no need to show me such courtesy, although I thank you for it. I am no more high-born than you. Forgive me for disturbing you at your painting, but I simply had to make the acquaintance of the young prodigy whose name has been mentioned at my salon more than once.”

Elisabeth was struck dumb by her words. Had such people really been talking about her? How could they have seen her work?

“I see that reports of your talent have not been exaggerated.” Madame Geoffrin approached the portrait of Elisabeth’s mother slowly, cocking her head to one side and then another, taking her time to examine it. “This is magnificent. Who is your model?”

“My mother,” Elisabeth said.

“I’m sure she is an excellent lady. Certainly handsome, if the picture is like her. But I think perhaps we can help you gain a more illustrious clientele.”

Elisabeth could hardly breathe, and remembered her manners belatedly. “Perhaps you would like to sit?”

“Ah, no, I won’t stay. Would you and your mother kindly accept my invitation to a small gathering at my apartments on Monday next? We dine promptly at one. And might I borrow this portrait for the occasion as well?”

“I—we, I mean—such an honor! We have no other plans, Madame.” It was more than Elisabeth ever expected. Her mother would be thrilled!

Madame Geoffrin nodded and turned, making her slow way back to the door. Elisabeth rang the bell for Lucie, who opened the door so quickly she must have been listening.

“Monday, then,” Madame Geoffrin said, with a wave of her hand.

CHAPTER 7

“Remember, my dear, to take note of their jewels! I must hear what everyone is wearing to such occasions as these. Madame Geoffrin often receives royalty, I am told.” Le Sèvre hadn’t stopped giving them instructions ever since Elisabeth told her mother about their invitation.

“She herself is royalty,” her mother said.

Le Sèvre curved his mouth down in an ugly frown. “Bah! Only on the wrong side of the blanket.” He gripped his hands together, then flattened his interlaced fingers and pushed them away from himself, making an excruciating crunching sound. “Are you certain that is what you will wear?”

“My dear,” Elisabeth’s mother said, “This is the third time I have changed! And I believe these simple jewels will be enough for an afternoon salon.” She fingered the ruby-studded cross hung from a thin black ribbon around her slender throat. “Viens ma chère!” She took hold of Elisabeth’s arm and steered her toward the door. Lucie waited with their jackets and fans. The portrait had already been sent around to Madame Geoffrin’s apartment only a short distance away from them on the Rue Saint Honoré.

But despite the nearness, mother and daughter did not walk. Le Sèvre insisted on hiring a carriage, saying they should not arrive with soiled slippers.

Elisabeth hadn’t eaten anything that morning, and there was no question of painting. She’d cleaned the flecks of pigment off her fingers so carefully the night before, and it had taken so long to get her pinned and tied into her panniers and gown that she would hardly have had time to do any work anyway before they had to leave.

“Are you nervous?” her mother whispered to her as soon as they were settled in the carriage.

“A little,” Elisabeth said. But she wasn’t nervous about her painting. She was more anxious about what she would say to anyone. She’d spent only two years in the convent school learning barely enough to acquire the skills deemed necessary to a young lady—the ability to write an elegant letter, and the manners to go through society without causing undue offense. And there had been that disgrace that her father laughed off, that she had been sent home because she had defaced all her textbooks with drawings—of the nuns, her classmates, even the servants. That had been the end of her formal schooling, although she read whatever books were in the house—mostly collections of spiritual writings and the odd treatise on painting. What would have been the point anyway? Elisabeth had thought. She would be a painter, and she didn’t need any real education for that. At that moment, though, she wished she could have had the advantage Étienne had, of studying Latin and reading philosophy and mathematics. She was sure she would be stupid and mute when faced with all those intelligent people.

Almost as soon as they settled in the carriage it was time to descend again. A liveried footman opened the door handed them out, helping them avoid the puddles left after a recent rain.

Although not an apartment, like the one they lived in, Madame Geoffrin’s town house was not so grand as Elisabeth thought it might be. Not like one of the hôtels particuliers that she had heard of with dozens of rooms and scores of servants. Elisabeth couldn’t help noticing as another servant led them upstairs to the reception room that nonetheless, no expense had been spared in the decoration. Everything was of the highest quality, albeit understated.

“Ah, here are Madame Le Sèvre and Mademoiselle Vigée! Come, let me introduce you to the others.” Madame Geoffrin took Jeanne’s arm and left Elisabeth to follow behind. Elisabeth was grateful for this courtesy to her mother. Even though it had been her painting that inspired the invitation, she was so young, and her mother was still so beautiful, and she shouldn’t be hidden away in a dark, unfriendly apartment.

By the time they left, having eaten a sumptuous meal—or at least, in Elisabeth’s case, picked at it—Elisabeth was sure of having three, possibly four portrait commissions from members of the aristocracy.

She was on her way.